A circumspect Tony Abbott? Who da thunk it!

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was out and about last week trying to plow fertile ground in the Adelaide hills and raise up the best xenophobic crop of 2010.
In the process he once again came face to face with alleged Holocaust-denier Gerald Federick Tobin.
Given the rich mine of embarassing achived material from his university and journalism days, it was rather surprising to find his somewhat sympathetic 1987 Bulletin magazine article on Toben contained no over the top right-wing judgments of Australian society which might come back to haunt him.
It seems a restrained and relatively balanced Tony Abbott may once have existed in an alternative universe....

Case of the teacher who wasn’t kept in
Tony Abbott, The Bulletin, 1987

Doctor Fredrick Toben has achieved what many thought impossible. He has been sacked for “incompetence” as a teacher in an Australian school.

Despite the quoted desire of NSW Education Minister Rod Cavalier to weed out “malingerers in the staffroom”, dismissal is not a threat our teachers normally face. Educators contacted by The Bulletin said that any dismissal was rare and dismissal for alleged incompetence almost unknown. The picture which emerges is of teaching authorities who take a benign, almost parental view of their employees’ failings.

Most teachers dismissals follow significant criminal convictions. Others occur only after the failure of an elaborate counselling process. In Australian schools, complaints against teachers are normally handled by principals. If not resolved, they are referred to the department of education.

The Victorian Ministry of Education, which employs 55,000 teachers, dismisses “three or four” for incompetence each year - usually when “an element of senility” is involved. An official of a Catholic education office in Victoria, employing about 1000 teachers, said that he had “never written a letter of dismissal”.

As a spokesman for the NSW Education Department - which employs nearly 48,000 teachers and has dismissed “a very few” - put it: “If someone has successfully passed teachers college, there are usually personal reasons for sub-standard performance…Quite often, with a particular group, a person may not feel comfortable…We would usually transfer such a person to another school where there was more motivation and security…”

Only when subsequent inspection shows no improvement and when a teacher declines to resign, may formal disciplinary proceedings be instituted - possibly leading to dismissal. Most teachers resign at this point. Fredrick Toben stubbornly refused because he had done nothing wrong.

Toben’s troubles began in 1983 when the Goroke Consolidated School principal, Ray McCraw, withdrew approval for his permanency application. McCraw said that Toben’s classes had deteriorated.

Toben said that McCraw felt threatened by his qualifications - Arts degrees from Melbourne and Wellington universities, a doctorate from Stuttgart University and 17 tyears’ teaching experience in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Goroke is in far western Victoria. In a small town, small school atmosphere, rumors spread that McCraw was unhappy with Toben. He became something of an outcast in the staffroom. Some pupils began to disrupt his classes. Victoria - unlike other states - has no provision for formal inspection of teachers thought to be unsatisfactory. Toben asked several times for inspection. Instead, in mid-1984, a “support group” was set up. It comprised McCraw and three other teachers as well as Toben’s nominee, fellow teacher Glenn Duncan. After four weeks’ observation the group agreed that Toben’s classes were unruly and that his teaching methods were inappropriate.

Duncan - who signed the group’s report with some reservations - recently told The Bulletin that Toben “didn’t really get a fair go” and that his problems were the result of a “personality clash” with McCraw, compounded by philosophical differences, which had gradually infected the whole school.

Next, a formal inquiry was held in October 1984. It was conducted jointly by a union official and a senior officer of the Victorian Ministry of Education who wrote to Toben beforehand saying that the inquiry was "“act-finding, rather than judgmental”. Despite this, the inquiry endorsed the support group’s assessment and expressed a “strong preference” that Toben be “dismissed from the teaching service”.

Toben’s case was finally heard by the then Director-General of Victorian Education, Dr Norman Curry. According to Toben - and this has not been denied by the ministry - Curry said: “Give me a good reason why I should not act on the inquiry’s recommendation that you be dismissed.”

Normally , these hearings are quasi-judicial - both sides call and question witnesses. In his case, Curry questioned Toben and four of his supporters but Toben did not have a chance to question McCraw. Toben was not represented. On February 4, 1985, Curry informed Toben that he had been dismissed for “incompetence”.

Since then, Toben - who now drives a school bus - has been trying to re-enter the teaching profession. The ministry has said that it will re-employ him after “evidence of successful teaching”. But no school, so far, has been prepared tot ake him on. The Ombudsman has refused to investigate without evidence of “clear injustice”. That, however, is precisely what Toben hoped an investigation would determine.

Toben’s former union, the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association, told The Bulletin that correct procedures had been observed in his case as far as it was concerned.

A senior state educator, who requested anonymity....., admitted that “…it’s not a fair world…Toben was not the worst teacher in the system and there are hundreds who are the same…Toben may have been unlucky…”.

Bad luck or injustice? Professor Lauchlan Chipman, of Wollongong University, said that “even awkward and unpopular people have rights”. He said Toben’s case “typified the fate of the one-off model in Australia.

While school authorities are making determined efforts to lift teaching performance and elaborate procedures are in place to ensure that this does not occur at the expense of teachers’ rights, it would be ironic if one of the few sacked for incompetence turned out not to have deserved it.

Image from VexNews

Federal Labor hanging on in the latest opinion poll

Federal Labor must occasionally be doing something right even if The Australian newspaper isn’t reporting it.

This week’s Essential Research opinion poll shows Labor neck-and-neck with the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis which is calculated on vote distribution at the last general election.

However, first preference voter intention is still favouring the Coalition by three percentage points and, unless the bleed across to the ideologically popular Greens slows it is possible that Labor will continue to trail in the minds of those voters polled.

Q. If a Federal Election was held today to which party will you probably give your first preference vote? If not sure, which party are you currently leaning toward?

Q. If don’t know -Well which party are you currently leaning to?

sample size = 1,844

Click on image to enlarge

NB. The data in the above tables comprise 2-week averages derived the first preference/leaning to voting questions. Respondents who select ‘don’t know’ are not included in the results. The two-party preferred estimate is calculated by distributing the votes of the other parties according to their preferences at the 2010 election.

Modern aviation today or why it's safer to fly Bumblebee

Logo, quote and update link from Qantas website

This is the official Qantas explanation for the spot of bother with its flight to Sydney via Singapore on 4 November 2010:
"Qantas Flight 32, operated by an A380, was en route from Singapore to Sydney when a serious engine issue occurred.
As is normal procedure the aircraft turned back to Singapore and landed safely.
All passengers were accommodated in Singapore and an alternative aircraft is now bringing passengers to Australia."

Richard Farmer over at Crikey posted this little bewdy yesterday showing the Rolls Royce Trent 900 Series engine warning issued to commercial airlines almost three months to the day before Australia's 'own' airline apparently experienced the third and most spectacular Airbus malfunction so far.
If Qantas passengers had been aware of the wording in this directive, I doubt any would have boarded.

Click on image to enlarge

Update on QF32 and Qantas A380 Operations

From the Truth Is Stranger Than file: GMO Death-Tech meets Hit Squad

"A death-tech firm weds a hit squad.”
Blogger Rady Ananda

It appears that bio-tech giant Monsanto & Co. has graduated from in-house open source intelligence gathering and moved on to involve itself in the murky world of Blackwater ops.

From The Sovereign Independent, 1 November 2010:

Monsanto hired mercenary Blackwater to infiltrate anti-GMO groups

A spokesperson for Monsanto, reached by Scahill, first denied the relationship with Blackwater, but then admitted that Monsanto had paid Total Intelligence for intelligence reoprts

“… about the activities of groups or individuals that could pose a risk to company personnel or operations around the world which were developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information. The subject matter ranged from information regarding terrorist incidents in Asia or kidnappings in Central America to scanning the content of activist blogs and websites.”………

The documents obtained by Scahill show that Monsanto paid Blackwater’s subsidiary, Total Intelligence a total of $232,000 for intelligence services provided in 2008 and 2009. Aside from the brief statement provided to Scahill, Monsanto is keeping quiet on the matter, as is Blackwater and the other organizations cited in Scahill’s article. Scahill said the Canadian Military paid Blackwater over $1.6 million for training, which was provided through Blackwater’s subsidiary, the Terrorism Research Center. Blackwater violated some US export control laws, reported Yahoo News this past August, violations which included the provision of training to the Canadian Military. While the list of violations the US Department of State found Blackwater guilty of is extensive, the company was only fined $42 million. The company name ‘Blackwater’ was changed to Xe (pronounced ‘zee’) in 2009, which Source Watch called a ‘rebranding effort.’ The company is now up for sale. AFP reported Blackwater operatives were accused of killing 17 Iraqis, wounding a further 22 in what was said to be an unprovoked attack in 2007. The company was later cleared of all wrongdoing. Blackwater was ordered out of Iraq earlier this year because of that violent incident said CBS News.

GMO FOOD PRODUCTS AND PRODUCTION AIDS APPROVED FOR SALE/USE IN AUSTRALIA

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Want to know about the history of Yuragir National Park in northern New South Wales?

An excellent point of reference is There were always people here: a history of Yuraygir National Park .

Written by Johanna Kijas and published by the New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change, this publication is one to treasure. I've been on the lookout for something such as this for many years.

The publication explores the ways in which:
* Aboriginal people have retained their connections to Country
* settler Australians have created new lives and formed new attachments to the landscape
* complex historical and social forces and conflicts have shaped the creation and establishment of Yuraygir National Park.

It also records some of the wonderfully rich memories that people have of this landscape. It records the way they experience it, the way they remember it, how they continue to revisit it, and how the landscape itself provokes powerful emotions.

I must acknowledge that it was a review by blogger perkinsy that pointed me in the direction of this excellent publication. Thanks, perkinsy!

Here are some extracts from perkinsy's review:

One of the features of this publication is the incorporation of both Aboriginal and settler histories into the narrative.  The custodial relationship of the local Aboriginal people to the land prior to European settlement, during the difficult period of colonisation through to today is recognised throughout.  Australian history did not start with European settlement, the Aboriginal people had lived here for thousands of years.  Acknowledgement of this is also reflected in the title – ‘there were always people here’.

 ... there is enough information for a reader who is interested in a particular issue mentioned in the publication to follow up more detailed sources through the footnotes and the extensive bibliography.

This is more than a synthesis of the work of others.  Kijas has sought to address the gaps in our knowledge of the history of the area.  The contribution that this publication makes to our knowledge is through the many interviews that Kijas has done with those people whose families made a significant contribution to the area, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.

Read perkinsy's review of There were always people here.

Credits: Department of Environment and Climate Change and Yvonne Perkins

Another attempt to define protections for Australian mental health service consumers

National standards for mental health services 2010
National standards for mental health services 2010 (PDF 699 KB large file)

"This document outlines a set of mental health service standards which can be applied to all mental health services, including government, non-government and private sectors across Australia."

Standard 6.

Consumers

Consumers have the right to comprehensive and integrated mental health care that meets their individual needs and achieves the best possible outcome in terms of their recovery.
(Note: The consumer standard is not assessable, as it contains criteria that are all assessable within the other standards.)

Criteria

6.1 Consumers have the right to be treated with respect and dignity at all times.

6.2 Consumers have the right to receive service free from abuse, exploitation, discrimination, coercion, harassment and neglect.

6.3 Consumers have the right to receive a written statement, together with a verbal explanation, of their rights and responsibilities in a way that is understandable to them as soon as possible after entering the MHS.

6.4 Consumers are continually educated about their rights and responsibilities.

6.5 Consumers have the right to receive the least restrictive treatment appropriate, considering the consumer’s preference, the demands on carers, and the availability of support and safety of those involved.

6.6 A mental health professional responsible for coordinating clinical care is identified and made known to consumers.

6.7 Consumers are partners in the management of all aspects of their treatment, care and recovery planning.

6.8 Informed consent is actively sought from consumers prior to any service or intervention provided or any changes in care delivery are planned, where it is established that the consumer has capacity to give informed consent.

6.9 Consumers are provided with current and accurate information on the care being delivered.

6.10 Consumers have the right to choose from the available range of treatment and support programs appropriate to their needs.

6.11 The right of consumers to involve or not to involve carers and others is recognised and respected by the MHS.

6.12 Consumers have an individual exit plan with information on how to re-enter the service if needed.

6.13 Consumers are actively involved in follow-up arrangements to maintain continuity of care.

6.14 The right of consumers to have access to their own health records is recognised in accordance with relevant Commonwealth and state / territory legislation / guidelines.

6.15 Information about consumers can be accessed by authorised persons only.

6.16 The right of the consumer to have visitors and maintain close relationships with family and friends is recognised and respected by the MHS.

6.17 Consumers are engaged in development, planning, delivery and evaluation of the MHS.

6.18 Training and support is provided for consumers involved in a formal advocacy and / or support role within the MHS.

They have stopped throwing shoes in Britain......

"A woman stabbed an MP twice in the stomach during a constituency surgery in revenge for his vote for the war in Iraq, a court heard today."
{The Independent UK on 1st November 2010}
More here.